Why I Avoid iCloud on My iPhone: A Professional's Perspective

Published Jan 30, 2025, 7:00 AM EST

Alvin discovered his love for writing while wrapping up his first degree in Analytical Chemistry. As a technology enthusiast, he started his writing career as a tech writer dabbling in different aspects of technology in 2019.

Now, with an IT degree under his belt and over five years of writing experience, he specializes in writing instructional programming tutorials on HTML/CSS, JavaScript, Python, Cloud, and Linux. Outside of writing, he works as a software engineer.

Alvin joined MUO in May 2021. His work has been featured in several publications, including XDA Developers. Outside of software engineering and writing, he's passionate about travel and fitness.

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• Limited Free iCloud Storage

• Plenty of On-Device Storage

• I Already Pay for Google One

• iCloud Locks You Into Apple's Ecosystem

I've owned an iPhone since 2019, but there's one Apple feature I still haven't bought into: iCloud.

1 Limited Free iCloud Storage

By default, Apple only provides 5GB of free iCloud storage. That may sound like a lot, but for a one-stop place for backing up all your iPhone data, including your pictures, system backups, and more, 5GB of cloud storage won't get you far.

With this 5GB, it won't take long before you're out of storage, as your typical iPhone backup can occupy at least half or more of that. It's worse if you take lots of photos and videos. Apple knows this, and it's no surprise that the company offers an iCloud+ subscription, which includes more storage at a fixed monthly cost.

Don't get me wrong; as far as costs are concerned, iCloud+ isn't expensive unless you want terabytes of storage. However, Apple's strategy has deterred me from using iCloud because it seems the company purposely offers such limited storage to upsell its paid cloud subscription service.

Google gives you 15GB of storage space for free with Google Drive, so the 5GB limit here feels too low.

2 Plenty of On-Device Storage

Another key reason is that my iPhone 11 has plenty of storage, so I don't need to use iCloud. My model includes 128GB of onboard storage, which is more than enough for my needs.

With plenty of local storage available, I rarely run into situations where I feel constrained. By utilizing more of my phone's built-in storage, I'm less reliant on Apple's cloud storage service to the point where I don't need it.

Of course, using on-device storage has limitations. There's always the risk of losing data if something happens to the device. As someone who has lost devices in the past, I understand this, and that's why I have backups for my most important data. I just don't rely on iCloud for those.

3 I Use My Mac for Backups

Device backups are essential, which is one of the key reasons you might consider using iCloud. Thankfully, iCloud isn't the only way to back up your iPhone.

I back up my iPhone to a MacBook. This method allows you to create full device backups, similar to Apple's iCloud backup. And if the need arises, you can always restore your iPhone from a backup if something happens to your device.

Since my MacBook has plenty of storage, I can easily keep several iPhone backups without worrying about storage space. But this isn't possible just because I have a MacBook—you can also back up your iPhone to a Windows device.

4 I Already Pay for Google One

Despite having plenty of storage on my MacBook, I still believe in storing essential data in multiple places. I lost all my data once and wouldn't want a repeat of the same, so I paid for Google One.

Google One gives me 100GB of storage, which is currently enough for storing photos, videos, documents, and other files on my iPhone and Android smartphone. Plus, as I mentioned above, Google gives you 15GB free just for having a Google account.

It also helps that Google offers a near-seamless integration with the iPhone, which makes accessing and storing data straightforward.

Since Google One meets all my cloud storage needs, I see no point in using iCloud when I can seamlessly back up my files and access them across different Google services, like Google Photos and Google Drive, on both my Android and iOS devices.

5 iCloud Locks You Into Apple's Ecosystem

One of the pros of using iCloud on an iPhone is Apple's seamless integration, which makes it easy to store and access files. However, the flip side of this tight integration into its hardware comes at the expense of making it challenging to use iCloud across different platforms and even more complicated to switch to alternative platforms.

For example, storing and accessing photos and files in iCloud on an iPhone is easy via the Photos and Files app. However, the only way to access iCloud on Android is via the web, which is tedious.

As such, iCloud feels like one of Apple's many tools for locking you into its ecosystem. Instead of being locked into Apple's walled garden via iCloud, I prefer using other solutions like Google Drive, which has superior cross-platform compatibility.

iCloud is an excellent solution for iPhone backups if you're fully sold on Apple's ecosystem. However, its stricter cross-platform compatibility and limited free storage make it a hard sell for me since I also have an Android phone and already pay for Google One.